Intel has NO idea what to do…
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,519 words · ~7 min read
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oh 6 a.m
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why i just said this oh wait
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the review embargo just lifted on Intel's new CPU i gotta go check out the
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wall of videos from all my favorite channels about the exact same damn thing
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after this message from adrena's fedrina's cold brew coffees are
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i'm gonna have to be honest with you guys this
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is not a very interesting product on its
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own merit and it's a lot more straightforward than the other launches
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that we've had this year but don't stop watching because there is a
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twist so normally we'd talk about what's
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different between the 18 core core i9 9980xc and its brother the 18 core
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7980xe but you might have noticed that i said
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brother not cousin predecessor that's
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because these two are so similar that they're almost twins there's been no new
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manufacturing process no more cores no
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more cash no more pci express lanes no
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memory frequency or capacity improvement nor even a slight refresh of an existing
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chipset so that we can all run out and buy new motherboards
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so then how did they push the clock speeds higher have they raised the TDP so that
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it can just suck back more juice and run laps around the previous extreme edition
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no no they did not so how does it go faster
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well we know from past experience that Intel has been treating the TDP ratings
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of their cpus more like guidelines for cooler design than actual
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power consumption specifications so let's take a look at the one thing that
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they did change just like the 9th gen
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consumer 9900k our
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9th gen hedt though it should be noted
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that architecturally they're more like 8th and 6th generation respectively
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9980xc gets a soldered heat spreader so maybe
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the idea here is that as long as a cooler spec for Intel's TDP rating can
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handle the CPU with nice low temps then
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we're cool and it can it can turbo up more solder should help with that
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let's see by how much now
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given that it comes in at the same price as the outgoing 7980xe
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the 9980xc only really has to perform
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marginally better to come away with a strong recommendation here
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no i'm sorry i'm just kidding so we're going to be comparing it to AMD's
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offerings and Intel's own mainstream
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platform and i think it's going to be a little rough
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yeah it's a little rough even with its
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higher bass and boost clocks gaming
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really isn't this CPU's forte now there's no reason why it can't game
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but it's immediately obvious why it shouldn't Intel's consumer cpus tooled
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the 9980xes predecessors and the only
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changes here are that it picks up a couple points in directx 12 and in the
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very frequency dependent cs go but productivity is the real bread and
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butter of an HDD chip anyway and here we do get some pretty big jumps
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in performance over last gen especially in 7-zip and cinebench both in single
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threaded and multi-threaded modes a trend that continues down the line
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with decent results in adobe premiere and blender where the base clock
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increase becomes more significant the longer the render takes to complete
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with that said red ripper thanks to its lower pricing
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and higher core counts continues to either compete valiantly or make Intel
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look downright stupid across most of the productivity suite
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now some of you may have noticed that the improvement in performance over last
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gen is really inconsistent if this thing is just
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200 megahertz higher across the spec sheet
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then all other things being equal which
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they are we should be able to pretty much guess
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the uplift but we've got tests here that barely improved at all even after
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multiple runs well
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after further digging we think we've reached the bottom of it if we look at
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our thermal results on first glance it looks like we're getting better thermals
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than our 7980xe and with lower power draw
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but by going deeper we think we discovered the reason that Intel has refused to say
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what their all-core boost multipliers are
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so our avx-512 stress test had this CPU
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running at just 2.8 gigahertz across all
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cores that is lower than the base clock
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of the 9980xc and coincidentally the
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same as the base clock on the 7980xc it
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replaces so users of avx 512 workloads
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yeah you're not getting an upgrade today at all
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switching to avx-2 got us to 3.3
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gigahertz that's just a hundred megahertz over the 7980xe with increases
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in both temperatures and power draw then turning avx off all together netted
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us a healthy 3.8 gigahertz all-core boost that's 400 megahertz higher than
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the 7980xes so that's where the performance increase
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in non-avx workloads like gaming is
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coming from but it also resulted in more power draw
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with our 9980xc easily surpassing every
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other CPU we tested in this scenario so the bottom line is this this new sku
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seems to be basically a 7980xe
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with a different voltage curve which allows its better bind die to draw less
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power at 2.8 gigahertz with the side effect being that it requires more juice
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to achieve its higher true all-core boost clock
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as for that soldered heat spreader it doesn't seem to be making much of a
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difference but there are a couple of extra degrees of headroom i guess so if
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you're a real masochist you can slap a fat cooler on this thing and remove the
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turbo limits just make sure please that you have active vrm cooling for your
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motherboard just like for the 7980xc
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bottom line the numbers that you read on the box for the core i9 9980xe should be taken with
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a dose of salt large enough to prune a whale let's start with the 9. this is
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not a 9th gen processor in so much as it doesn't use Intel's 9th generation core
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micro architecture nor is it even the ninth family of hedt processors it is
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6th gen with some extra seasoning namely salt
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as for these clock speeds well they're fine as long as Intel is
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assuming that their customers don't intend to use their 2 000 processor for
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the kinds of professional workloads that might justify a 2 000 processor which is
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obviously stupid and only going to get stupider as use of avx instructions
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becomes more prevalent so in my opinion
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these marketing numbers are misleading at best and making matters worse
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much worse is that Intel is refusing to be transparent about them we asked
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straight up to have a simple table provided to us so that we'd know what to
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expect during our testing and they wouldn't tell us
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what is the purpose of this song and dance we can measure these numbers
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why not just save us the hassle and put it in the reviewer's guide
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i get that giving us these numbers makes the product look worse
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but like the product is what it is we
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were going to figure that out now it's just worse and you've pissed off the
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reviewers who are supposed to be either recommending or slamming your product
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when the embargo lifts and you guys wonder why you have pr
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problems over there anyway
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9980xc then it's pretty cool
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but i can't think of a use case that i would buy one for
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lightweight plastic housing which massdrop says is built to stand up to regular use and they come with two
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removable braided cables so pick them up on massdrop for just 59.99 at the link
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in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that
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